Jason Zweig at The Wall Street Journal warns that the bond market is in a bubble. He may be right. Or not. It’s always hard to tell when bubbles are lurking. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, but we need to be wary of going off the deep end too.
Daily Archives: October 4, 2010
READING ROUNDUP FOR MONDAY: 10.4.2010
►Cheap Debt for Corporations Fails to Spur Economy
Graham Bowley/New York Times
“American corporations have been saving more money since the financial collapse of 2008. But a recent rush of blue-chip bond offerings — including a $4.75 billion deal last month by Microsoft, one of the richest companies in the world — has put even more money in their coffers.
Corporations now sit atop a combined $1.6 trillion of cash, a figure equal to slightly more than 6 percent of their total assets. In the first quarter of this year it was 6.2 percent of assets, the highest level since 1964, when it was 6.4 percent.
When will they start spending that money — in particular, by hiring?
That is part of what has become the great question of this long, jobless recovery: When will corporate America start to feel confident enough to put its cash to work, building factories and putting some of the nation’s 14.9 million unemployed to work?”